Pandemic? Well it's one louder than an epidemic....iddn't it?According to the doctors, the swine flu is as highly contagious, fairly mild disease. Unless you were vaccinated 35 years ago with President Ford, or last week, none of us has a natural immunity to it. According to the cable news “experts” we’ve got a pandemic on our hands. According to the President, we’ve got a national emergency.
To paraphrase R.E.M: It’s the end of the world as we know it...yet, somehow, I feel fine.
A pandemic, of course, is somehow more noxious than an epidemic, although even the experts seem hard pressed to explain why. Yet the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic was much worse that today’s H1N1 pandemic by a factor of several times. So the 1918 epidemic has, some 90 years after it ceased to be an issue, declared a pandemic. Some we’ve come to the point in this national emergency when we’re re-christening old disasters to make the current situation seem more “disastery.” Which is generally the point when you need to stop listening to anyone on television (or me, for that matter), keep a handkerchief handy, and talk to the one who makes you turn your head and cough.
If you are an adolescent in good health, the good doctor will tell you, or even in late middle age without a previously impaired immune problem or somewhere in between, the worst thing that the swine or any other flu is likely to do is send you to the bed for an uncomfortable couple of days. That and stay hydrated.
Since April, there have been around 1,000 deaths from H1N1; about half of those had previously impaired immune systems. In an average year, there are about 36,000 deaths from the plain vanilla flu. So to go by the numbers we all agree on, the standard flu we all expect to get sometime by spring is, at this early stage, 72 times worse than the H1N1 strain that has prompted the national emergency.
The charitable view of the president’s declaration is that he is being pro-active to avoid his Hurricane Katrina – i.e. getting blamed politically for some unfortunately timed force of the natural world. As if Mr. Obama fears that Michael Bublé will take a page out of the book of Kanye and announce that the president hates white people. That won’t happen because Glenn Beck, who can’t sing but cries like Barbara Streisand, has already tried that stunt.
The uncharitable view would be that what has been produced by H1N1 isn’t a once in a lifetime plague, but a once in a lifetime political opportunity for a government seeking to expand its role in healthcare. Creating a disaster and then solving it has been a hallowed tactic of lackluster mothers and husbands trying to get of the sofa for generations – because it works. Saving the republic from an imaginary plague is going to be a lot more humane that saving us from imaginary nukes in the Iraqi desert.
We are still, it should be noted, fighting a war over those imaginary nukes, as well as one with a real enemy in Afghanistan. The economy may be walking again but it’s got a nasty limp. Even Democrats have voiced concern over attempting to reform healthcare when the economy is in such a precarious position and we are fighting two wars and contemplating and third with Iran. Why the rush on healthcare, an issue that needs reform but has been manageably gummed up for a generation now? It’s a legitimate question. So far, Mr. Obama has not yet been able to come up with an answer that justifies more debt on a battered dollar and less attention on two wars that desperately need some focus back home. He has failed to generate the required sense of eminent danger required for Americans to give up their rights (a la The Patriot Act) without a fight.
By declaring the country is in a state of emergency, the White House can swoop in with a vaccination that not be a life saver but probably is a good idea anyway, and when this year’s runny noses turn out to be no more fatal than any other, tell us how we couldn’t have gotten through it without the government’s benevolent hand.
To create a crisis, and then be the one to solve it is an age-old political trick. By employing it, the Obama administration isn’t redefining politics as he once claimed, but resorting to one of the oldest tricks in the book. Literally, even Machiavelli warned against false rescuers.
A pandemic, of course, is somehow more noxious than an epidemic, although even the experts seem hard pressed to explain why. Yet the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic was much worse that today’s H1N1 pandemic by a factor of several times. So the 1918 epidemic has, some 90 years after it ceased to be an issue, declared a pandemic. Some we’ve come to the point in this national emergency when we’re re-christening old disasters to make the current situation seem more “disastery.” Which is generally the point when you need to stop listening to anyone on television (or me, for that matter), keep a handkerchief handy, and talk to the one who makes you turn your head and cough.
If you are an adolescent in good health, the good doctor will tell you, or even in late middle age without a previously impaired immune problem or somewhere in between, the worst thing that the swine or any other flu is likely to do is send you to the bed for an uncomfortable couple of days. That and stay hydrated.
Since April, there have been around 1,000 deaths from H1N1; about half of those had previously impaired immune systems. In an average year, there are about 36,000 deaths from the plain vanilla flu. So to go by the numbers we all agree on, the standard flu we all expect to get sometime by spring is, at this early stage, 72 times worse than the H1N1 strain that has prompted the national emergency.
The charitable view of the president’s declaration is that he is being pro-active to avoid his Hurricane Katrina – i.e. getting blamed politically for some unfortunately timed force of the natural world. As if Mr. Obama fears that Michael Bublé will take a page out of the book of Kanye and announce that the president hates white people. That won’t happen because Glenn Beck, who can’t sing but cries like Barbara Streisand, has already tried that stunt.
The uncharitable view would be that what has been produced by H1N1 isn’t a once in a lifetime plague, but a once in a lifetime political opportunity for a government seeking to expand its role in healthcare. Creating a disaster and then solving it has been a hallowed tactic of lackluster mothers and husbands trying to get of the sofa for generations – because it works. Saving the republic from an imaginary plague is going to be a lot more humane that saving us from imaginary nukes in the Iraqi desert.
We are still, it should be noted, fighting a war over those imaginary nukes, as well as one with a real enemy in Afghanistan. The economy may be walking again but it’s got a nasty limp. Even Democrats have voiced concern over attempting to reform healthcare when the economy is in such a precarious position and we are fighting two wars and contemplating and third with Iran. Why the rush on healthcare, an issue that needs reform but has been manageably gummed up for a generation now? It’s a legitimate question. So far, Mr. Obama has not yet been able to come up with an answer that justifies more debt on a battered dollar and less attention on two wars that desperately need some focus back home. He has failed to generate the required sense of eminent danger required for Americans to give up their rights (a la The Patriot Act) without a fight.
By declaring the country is in a state of emergency, the White House can swoop in with a vaccination that not be a life saver but probably is a good idea anyway, and when this year’s runny noses turn out to be no more fatal than any other, tell us how we couldn’t have gotten through it without the government’s benevolent hand.
To create a crisis, and then be the one to solve it is an age-old political trick. By employing it, the Obama administration isn’t redefining politics as he once claimed, but resorting to one of the oldest tricks in the book. Literally, even Machiavelli warned against false rescuers.
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